Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron/Archive 50

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help with Nicky Diaz

I added the tag to Nicky Diaz before i saw that I should ask here if I'm the main editor. Sorry! I added a long list of new articles on the deletion page. Can it still be a part of the rescue project? Munijym (talk) 12:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

There's no requirement that you ask here first; anyone can tag any article for rescue. You are, however, strongly encouraged to notify the AfD discussion that you have tagged the article for rescue. Milowent has apparently already done this for you. SnottyWong ^converse 15:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

DYK eligibility for sourcing BLPs discussion

Cross posted from Wikipedia talk:Unreferenced BLP Rescue#DYK eligibility for sourcing BLPs discussion, please comment there if of interest to you: Via this notice at WT:URBLP, I was led to Wikipedia talk:Did you know#unsourced BLP Drive, where there is a discussion of making unreferenced BLPs which are fully referenced eligible for Did You Know? nomination, perhaps with a relaxed expansion requirement. (Current rules are that an old article must be expanded 5x to be eligible for DYK). This sounds like a great idea.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:23, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to participate!

Hello! As you may be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation is gearing up for our annual fundraiser. We want to hit our goal, and hit it as soon as possible, so that we can focus on Wikipedia's tenth anniversary (January 15) and on our new project, the Contribution Team.

I'm posting across WikiProjects to engage you, the community, in working to build Wikipedia not only through financial donations, but also through collaboration in building content. You can find more information in Philippe Beaudette's memo to the communities here.

Please visit the Contribution Team page and the Fundraising page to find out how you can help us support and spread free knowledge. ⇒ DanRosenthal ^{Wikipedia Contribution Team} 18:38, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

YOtel is on prod death row

I was just passing through the YOtel article since its coordinates were wrong, and I see there's been a bit of a dustup on the talk page. It looks like a former article at Yotel was A7 speedied back in Sept 2008, YOtel was prodded in July by User:Beeshoney on the grounds of being badly written and when that prod was removed Beeshoney gave a deadline of 48 hours for the article to be improved before (s)he prodded it again. That hasn't happened, but I think the article can be considered "vulnerable" even though there's clear notability with lots of sources. It's not that bad, it just needs a bit of a copyedit from someone with more experience than me of articles that could be considered WP:ADVERTy - anyone fancy it? Le Deluge (talk) 12:02, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

For future ref, PROD is a once-only deal, not for repeated use.  pablo 12:21, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You should make sure to inform the user that they are not allowed to PROD the article again after it has only been PRODed once. If, after you telling them this, they still do it anyway, then you should immediately take them to ANI. The lack of understanding about what notability is by this user on the talk page is rather concerning and I hope they do end up reading the guideline pages you linked. Silverseren^C 16:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, ANI is probably not called for the first time. A nice note from an administrator confirming that PROD means what it says, and instructing them on how to use AfD, should suffice. Always solve problems in the least dramatic reasonable way, please. :-) Jclemens (talk) 16:54, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Not defending Beeshoney's posts, but the posts and PROD occurred in July. Surely no action directed at a specific user is warranted based on these two posts alone!? VQuakr (talk) 17:07, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

What I said was that the user should be informed that PRODs cannot be used again after being used once. And if they do it again after being told such, then I think some action needs to be taken. Maybe not ANI, but if they clearly go against policy after being informed of said policy, that really shouldn't be overlooked. It shouldn't be an issue anymore though, hopefully, since I went ahead and improved the article with some more references. Silverseren^C 17:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Got another job for you folks ...

Heaven knows I've had clashes with some ARS folks, some of whom I believe will distort or ignore any guideline or policy which stands in the way of a Keep result at AfD, but here I've got a quandry. This article came to my attention just now. I've tagged it to hell and gone, could have tagged a great deal more, and have suggested taking it to AfD. I really would prefer not to do that; it strikes me as a notable subject. That being said, I'm not an expert on the Sri Lankan civil war and hesitate to dive into the snake pit that's the Sinhalese-Tamil tong war on Wikipedia. I see that planting a rescue tag is inappropriate prior to AfD - although that confuses me; shouldn't efforts be made to rescue articles prior to the deletion gun being loaded? - and so I hope that people here with more time, energy and/or inclination to do so will take a shot at it. Good fortune to those who do; it's likely a thankless task.  RGTraynor  03:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Ideally, placing any tag on an article will prompt the hordes of editors monitoring our cleanup categories (yeah, right) to descend on it. In reality, of course, such go generally unnoticed and unheeded, and many (most?) articles tagged for rescue likewise remain untouched by anyone. I don't have any personal expertise sourcing military and/or Sri Lankan articles, so I'm afraid I'll be unable to help personally. But who knows--someone else might, and it never hurts to ask here. Jclemens (talk) 05:14, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

While I know practically nothing about the Sri Lankan civil war, that doesn't mean I can't search for references to add. I'm pretty sure that I will be able to address the issue of notability, as I would for any article, even while knowing little about it. The actual improvement of the article in terms of prose will have to be left up to experts however. I have a test coming up on Tuesday. If you wait until after that, i'll have more time to give it a look over and a dive into Google News and places, to see what I can find. Silverseren^C 21:59, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

• Re this, "I see that planting a rescue tag is inappropriate prior to AfD - although that confuses me; shouldn't efforts be made to rescue articles prior to the deletion gun being loaded?" Of course!!! Hopefully everyone who edits wikipedia improves articles here and there. Out of 3.5 million articles, how many are horrible? Probably 3 million? But the ARS is like an ambulance that is called to the aid of someone having a heart attack. The victim should have eaten healthy and had regular checkups all along, but the EMTs are only called in when the person is near death. That being said, there's no harm in putting a notice here about an article not currently nominated for deletion, as maybe one of the watchers of this page (and not necessarily an ARS member) may jump in. Heaven knows I've placed notices on wikiproject talk pages many times looking for help with articles nominated for deletion and it rarely results in any help, but sometimes it might.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 02:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
  • "the EMTs are only called in when the person is near death" As an EMT, I can attest firsthand that this is not remotely true. :-) Jclemens (talk) 03:21, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Oh, just steal my thunder then, huh?!?!?! :-) OK, its an imperfect analogy, but they don't get called in when we eat an extra slice of bacon.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 03:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• That topic looks to be major boring sh*t and, as it is not at AFD, is out of scope. I have a better topic for the jaded editors who languish here waiting for work. This will put hair on your chest... Foxy boxing! Colonel Warden (talk) 07:35, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

After my test tomorrow, i'll work on both of them. Geez, none of you have any patience. :P Silverseren^C 22:30, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I found a source, but the problem is that the article is a copyvio, see this. I think the source is reliable, and I can put in some time in a day or so, but we should start from scratch with the material that is copied. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:08, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of books covering this, although they present a slightly different history to what's in this article. Here's one.

• Dissanayake, T. D. S. A. (2005). "The Protracted War". War Or Peace in Sri Lanka. Popular Prakashan. ISBN 9788179911990. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |isbn10= ignored (help)

Note also the existence of Second Battle of Elephant Pass. Uncle G (talk) 03:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Well, i've dealt with the Foxy boxing article. Now, for this Operation Unceasing Waves III one. I don't really want to wade into the waters of copyright issues right now. What would be the best way to deal with this? Silverseren^C 17:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Maybe just stub it out and add a source or two, then see if you can add back anything from history that is supported by the sources by rephrasing it. A shorter article that makes sense is a better start.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 02:37, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I think the normal procedure at this point is to wait a bit until the copyvio admins decide what to do with it. It was tagged on the 23rd, and I think they give the original author a week to clean it up, and then remove the article or parts of that are still a violation. The incident is clearly notable, so once that's done, we could work it back up. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:42, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Speaking with my "copyvio administrator" hat on, I'd say that since it is evident from comparing this edit with this article ("Copyright © 1997-2009 TamilNet") that Ellaalan (talk · contribs) was just copying and pasting wholesale, and that the last non-infringing revision of the article is this one (q.v.).

        The copyright violation is foundational, and you'll have to rewrite from scratch. Uncle G (talk) 03:01, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

        • Prolly easier that way anyhow, recasting prose always takes a long time.--Nuujinn (talk) 23:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Article Rescue Squadron is based on delusional optimism

Hello all. For those who don't know me, my name is Okip/Ikip.

Indefinitely blocked three times

I edited here for 5 years with over 50,000 plus edits.

I got in the middle of the Biography of Living Person debate were a small group of editors who have little respect for other editors contributions were attempting to delete tens of thousands of other editors contributions. This debate started when User:Scott MacDonald, User:Lar and a couple of other administrators who have little respect for other editors contributions deleted hundreds of articles, including Olympic athletes, etc. When Wikipedia founder Jim Wales personally thanked Scott Macdonald for deleting these articles it showed that Mr Wales has no respect for Wikipedia's main asset, the editors.

On the heels of this, I was indefinitely blocked for a second and third time. Since I am typing today, both blocks were obviously reverted, but the damage was done and the message was clear: editors who get in the way of purging by the bullies will be swiftly dealt with, with Jim Wales full blessing and support. Through the years, Wales has handpicked a leadership and fostered a company culture which has no respect for editors contributions.

Colonel Warden's indefinite block

Since Jim Wales blessing, the attacks by editors who have little respect for other editors contributions has only intensified. Snotty Wang (a frequent editor here), has been dragging a moderate editor, Colonel Warden to WP:ANI repeatedly. Colonel Warden has now been indefinitely blocked. Of course, policy is quoted for this continued harassment, but the underlying tension lies in Colonel Warden attempting to preserve and respect other editors contributions.

Sometimes a pessimist is an informed optimist

This years long argument have never been about deletion and inclusionism, at its core, it has always been about about tolerance for fellow editors viewpoints and respect for their hard work and contributions. The underlying elephant in the room, which no one can seriously discuss here, is that Jim Wale's Wikipedia simply doesn't respect other editors contributions.

"[ Inclusionist and Deletionists ] had been vying for control from early on in the site's life, but the numbers suggest that the deletionists may have won. The increasing difficulty of making a successful edit; the exclusion of casual users; slower growth – all are hallmarks of the deletionist approach."[1]

Americans by their nature are optimists, but the problem with this optimism is sometimes it has no basis in reality, and when a person fails, as we have, we blame ourselves, instead of accepting that we had no chance anyway. You simply cannot change somethings in life.

"No man can struggle with advantage against the spirit of his age and country, and however powerful a man may be, it is hard for him to make his contemporaries share feelings and ideas which run counter to the general run of their hopes and desires."

We cannot dethrown Jimbo and throw out all of his hand picked leadership, both paid and volunteer to start anew. We cannot change 8 years of company culture. Make no mistake, the root problem is Jim Wales. When Jim Wales personally thanks a bully like Scott MacDonald for deleting 100 articles, you know that Wikipedia has no real respect for the individual editor.

Article Rescue Squadron will be deleted, it is only a matter of time

Its not very hard to see the larger trend. ARS has been put up for deletion many times, every time it gets closer to being deleted. As editors who support this project continue to be silenced, eventually this project will be deleted (or diluted). It is not a matter of if, it has always been a matter of when.

Wikipedia:WikiSpeak

The editors who have little respect for other editors contributions and who regularly post here will attempt to character assassinate me. The more cunningly deceitful who have learned wikispeak, whose "...words are polite...but [whose] actions are obscene"[2] will say they support this project but they don't support the direction this project is going and the actions of the more "extreme" members. This ignores the underlying real shift, today's wikipedia is "extreme": it has evolved into a site which does not respect editors contributions.

The most effective wikipedia editors are those editors who bury their views in passive aggressive neutral sounding wikispeak, using such relaxing terms as "for the good of the project" "cooperation" and "working together". (Here is the absolute best example) Many will even call themselves "inclusionists". But ARS members, don't be fooled, look at the underlying actions of these editors: Do they little respect for other editors contributions? Examine the previous Article for Deletions for this project and how they supported the deletion of this project. Study how these editors treat new editor contributions and work together to build articles on a day to day basis.

Edit where your contributions are respected

I post here because I do not want any of my dear friends here to have to go through the emotional turmoil that many of us veteran editors already have. When you are inevitably targeted for your tolerance and respect for others contributions, please, for your own happiness, step back for one minute and reassess the big picture. For those of you who love the concept of wiki, but hate the way editors and your contributions are treated here, there are other non-Jim Wales wiki projects out there which respect editors hard work and contributions.

Please don't message me or email me. Thank you. Okip 20:59, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Missed you, man; an interesting a take as ever. But Wikia, where you spend your time these days, is hardly a non-Jim Wales project. And Colonel Warden is not blocked. See you soon. pablo 22:57, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

• We miss you Okip, I probably wouldn't be around without your early guidance. Come on back now, the battles are half the fun, at least! The inclusionist philosphy may be subject to frequent broadsides, but in fact it is winning every day. Over 1,000 new articles every day, deleted articles getting recreated all the time, deleted (verifiable) content being placed in other appropriate places. I won't post examples here, but I watch these things happen all the time. Its impossible for any cadre of editors to stop because the great mass of editors on wikipedia do not participate in AfD but are essentially inclusionist. The deletions of good content which are unfortunate and raise our ire are actually just drops in a bucket. So, come and edit here because people actually read wikipedia.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 04:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

P.S. and if you say i'm delusional i'm gonna kick your ass. :-)--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 04:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

• WP:TLDR. I thought you were retired. I apologize for dragging Colonel Warden repeatedly to ANI for minor annoyances like repeatedly making edits that are unambiguously counter to various policies, guidelines, and long-established consensus. And I apologize for the near unanimous agreement that editors voiced regarding my concerns. I will strive in the future to end my harassment of editors who are only trying to preserve and respect other editors' contributions. SnottyWong ^{spill the beans} 20:46, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

You don't know when to be quiet, do you?--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 21:17, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Ikip felt the need to present his very one-sided view of what SnottyWong did here, and you feel it is somehow inappropriate for SnottyWong to reply and give his side of things? If that's how you want to have things, then please take this to IRC or another website, but don't expect that you can mention people's actions here without them replying. Fram (talk) 22:02, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Not in his case, no.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 12:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• It does seem rather pointless at times. As all the interesting stuff is taken out of Wikipedia, less reason to bother coming here at all. I started over four years ago, and we made so much progress in those early days, but alas, things went sour, and we keep loosing more ground, and more great editors are driven away, and no matter how many articles we save far more are destroyed. Since Jul 18, 2006 I have made 11,038 edits and have 28 articles I created not yet deleted. [3] Dream Focus 21:39, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

This^{↑Dream Focus, not Ikip↑} makes, as usual, little sense. The number of visitors to the encyclopaedia suggests that "all the interesting stuff" is not being removed. The number of articles is increasing. Milowent's comments above, "The deletions of good content ... are actually just drops in a bucket ... people actually read wikipedia." are a more accurate reflection of reality. pablo 12:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Actually Ikip, next time you unretire, you may want to consider that the entire Wikipedia project is based on optimism ... and works surprisingly well most of the time. pablo 14:51, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Here's a relevant quotation. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:29, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

— James Branch Cabell

• No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up. --Nuujinn (talk) 18:44, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
• ARS isn't delusional. We improve and rescue articles every day... the only way ARS would ever get deleted is if we turn it into a home base to organize attacks... don't promote a battleground... most people can agree on improving articles so lets keep doing that where possible. keep the squadron going! Arskwad (talk) 23:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we have no ...

• Banana powder (AfD discussion)
  • Jenkins, Virginia S. (1999). "Bananas". In David Scofield Wilson and Angus K. Gillespie (ed.). Rooted in America: foodlore of popular fruits and vegetables. University of Tennessee Press. pp. 27–31. ISBN 9781572330535. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |isbn10= ignored (help)
  • Guiné, Raquel Pinho Ferreira; Dias, Maria João Barroca (2007). "Dried Banana". In Yiu H. Hui and Stephanie Clark (ed.). Handbook of Food Products Manufacturing. Vol. 1 Principles, Bakery, Beverages, Cereals, Cheese, Confectionary, Fats, Fruits, and Functional Foods. Wiley-Interscience. pp. 872–873. ISBN 9780470125243. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |isnb10= ignored (help)
  • Food and Agriculture Organization. Utilization of Tropical Foods: Trees. Food and Agriculture Organization. pp. 33–34. ISBN 9789251027769. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |isbn10= ignored (help)
  • "Banana Powder Good To Eat". Popular Mechanics. Vol. 62, no. 1. Hearst Magazines. 1934. p. 134. ISSN 0032-4558. {{cite magazine}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Kugelmass, Isaac Newton (1940). "Banana Powder". The newer nutrition in pediatric practice. J.B. Lippincott company. p. 336. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Kay, Daisy E. (1967). "G32: Banana products". Tropical Products Institute reports 30–40. London: Tropical Products Institute (Great Britain).: 169–173. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Crowther, P. C. (1979). "The processing of banana products for food use". London: Tropical Products Institute. ISBN 0859540987. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jenkins 1999 and Guiné & Dias 2007 indicate that there's possibly scope for refactoring into a general (sub-)article on banana#The fruit food products, covering banana figs, banana powder, banana chips (a fairly bad article), banana slices, banana jam, and banana flour altogether, as they (and indeed Kay 1967) all seem to do. Certainly there's scope for in-place expansion on the subject at hand, here. Uncle G (talk) 17:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

• Well, i've done my part. Feel free to let me know if there's any other articles that need to be worked on. Silverseren^C 20:28, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Since you asked. ... Here's another one:

• Urban Figure Ground Debate (AfD discussion)

I've worked out the (redlinked) name of the actual subject, and found some sources that can be used to add a proper encyclopaedic definition and introduction. Uncle G (talk) 23:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

FedEx Express Flight 647

FedEx Express Flight 647 is currently at AFD. Is this one worthy of rescue? Sources available include Aviation Safety Network and the NTSB report of the investigation into the accident. Mjroots (talk) 08:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

*takes out reference gun* RAT-A-TAT-TAT! *blows smoke from the barrel* Silverseren^C 09:12, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• I've never gotten into the air crash AfDs in any detail, i don't really understand why people get so crazed about ones that have sourcing. Do ones like this all need separate articles or would they be more useful if combined into an article like Aircraft incidents of 2003? I have no idea.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:ARSB

Template:ARSB has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you.

It looks like these are not in use, but thought you might want to know. 134.253.26.10 (talk) 18:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

If anyone wants a copy of it, or for me to move it to a subpage of this project, just let me know. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:35, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Article Creation Squadron?

Now, I know it doesn't fall under our purview, but I just wanted to make a suggestion about some articles that should be created. If you guys don't want to do it, then I can just take it over to WP:RA. Anyways, an hour or so ago, I somehow found myself browsing through Wikipedia Review's forum. Don't ask me how it happened, it just did (At first I thought I was on 4chan, but with better spelling and sentence structure).

While browsing through there, I came across this thread. And I thought it would be pretty amusing if someone went about and created all of the articles (at least the actual notable ones) that they mentioned on there. I have no idea if that would mean we are supporting or opposing Wikipedia Review, but I still think it would be funny as hell. A couple of the subjects they mentioned do have articles, so make sure you check for that.

If you guys feel up to it, I think it would be a lot of fun. Oh, and I call Gottlob Espenlaub. He's mine. >:3 Silverseren^C 06:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Is everyone ignoring me? :( Silverseren^C 21:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems to involve lots of extra work for people to again discuss articles which already have been nominated for deletion and a decision has been made to delete the article. Ulner (talk) 21:47, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

...wha? What are you talking about? As far as I know, none of these articles have been made before. Gottlob Espenlaub hasn't, at least. What do you mean? Silverseren^C 21:56, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Its just Wikipedia Review have been known to attack legendary editors such as ANobody and Benji. Im not sure they deserve any of our attention. Gottlob Espenlaub has a cool sounding name though, will look out for when you create the article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:03, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I really don't care all that much about WR. It's just the fact that their complaining is highly useful to making articles. I would have never ended up fixing up the article on Hogg (novel) if they hadn't made a thread complaining about it. And don't they attack pretty much everyone anyways? Essentially, anyone who is semi-important or known on WP gets attacked by them. I found the instances where I was mentioned on WR to be highly amusing. Tarc has to try much harder if he wants to insult me. :P Silverseren^C 22:13, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• WR is an interesting place, many there are negative about wikipedia but they are also very bright. I have created a few articles before that posters there were "shocked" didn't exist.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 21:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks to their complaining, i've written Gottlob Espenlaub, Charles Coolidge Parlin, National Analysts, William Caskey Swaim, William Jordan (actor), and Murder of Carlos Castro. Silverseren^C 21:27, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Seems like a pointy way of deciding which articles to write. Almost like you're writing articles out of spite, or to "teach them a lesson". That may not be your intention, but that's how it comes off. Just my 2¢. Interesting articles though. SnottyWong ^chatter 23:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Like i've said before, I don't care what they think or about WR in general. They just give me good article topics that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Silverseren^C 23:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Snotty, that's glass half empty way to view it. You have some of these disaffected academic phd types over there that do identify articles that should exist, like Tureng Tepe (to pick one i saw suggested and subsequently created). They don't need to be taught a lesson, they've just tired of the project (or been banned from it for whatever drama of years ago).--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 04:12, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright problems: a trove of articles waiting to be rescued

I'm not sure to what extent ARS members are aware of the large source of rescuable articles that get listed at WP:CP. These articles get listed because they contain copyright violations, and if no-one deals with them after 7 days, they usually get deleted or stubbified. Often they're about quite notable subjects: for example, today I blanked the very notable Insurgency in Ogaden. We also have the notable Australia – United Arab Emirates relations, Jackie Fields and History of Nicosia fast heading towards redlink territory.

Rescuing these articles would (a) help save worthy articles from deletion; and (b) help address copyright violations. (Sorry for the cheeky attention-grabbing edit summary) --Mkativerata (talk) 20:23, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestions - I've snagged Jackie Fields and am fixing that one up now. I didn't actually see the edit summary, but now I'm curious! - ManicSpider (talk) 22:28, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• • Nice one - it's not often you find a world boxing champion on the scrapheap. By the way, if anyone wanted to nominate a complete copyvio rewrite at DYK, you'd certainly have my support. The DYK rules don't directly address whether you can nominate a copyvio rewrite, but in my view it would constitute a "new article". --Mkativerata (talk) 22:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how that works - I rewrote one the other day and people suggested I put it up for a DYK but I wasn't sure how to interpret the rules. In one sense, you have increased the article five-fold from nothing (deleting the CopyVio material) but another interpretation might be that you've written less than the original inelligble article (if you see what I mean). - ManicSpider (talk) 23:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

  In my view, a complete rewrite of a copyvio is from scratch, so it shouldn't matter how long the copyvio was. If you can get any of them above 1500 characters of prose (the minimum for a new creation), I'd suggest giving it a go. Let me know if you need any help: the rules of DYK are labyrinthine and more of them are not in any way related to supporting the creation of good content.--Mkativerata (talk) 23:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Article Rescue Squadron keeps getting slandered

• A recent RFC about an active member of the ARS, has caused a lot of people to go there just to bash the ARS itself, both on the RFC page itself Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Colonel Warden and its talk page. People seem to be attacking the ARS more than the particular editor. The nominating editor is also drafting a proposal to dramatically limit the ARS User:Snottywong/ARS proposal. Seems like something that the ARS members might want to be involved in. Dream Focus 22:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Dream Focus, this has nothing to do with the core work of the ARS, which is (in case it had slipped your mind) improving articles which are nominated for deletion. Your posting here is akin to adding a {{rescue}} tag to the RFC itself, solely in order increase the chances of more people who agree with you turning up there. pablo 22:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It has everything to do with the ARS since that is the only reason some of them are going after one of its active members, as evident by their comments. Dream Focus 22:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Which articles are you hoping to "save" by posting these allegations here exactly? pablo 22:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'd say a fair number of us are following CW's tar-and-feathering, and its fair to place a note here noting that ARS-slagging there is in full force like a baptist preacher at a tent revival talking about methodists. That being said, I agree with pablo that the RfC is not about the ARS, so I've chosen to ignore that and I encourage others to do the same. I've only skimmed Snotty's proposal, but most of the ideas seem quite bureaucratic and absolutely unworkable, but I'll comment on the talk page of the draft if I decide to explain in detail. Some vocal editors have complained about the ARS since its inception, despite positive coverage in the media, its all the same rehash.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 23:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's the same rehash; it's the same issues, Milo; always has been. The thing is that they are pretty much all editor issues rather than project issues. pablo 23:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not a psychologist, but what's that phenomenon that causes people to blame groups instead of individuals, because it's easier to do so. Anyone know? So instead of someone saying the Colonel or Dream or me or whoever are their problem, they say "THE ARS". If there was a formal deletionist squad, perhaps we'd do the same thing. I can get irritated at The Wordsmith for his recent spate for AfDs noms which had a number of bad noms, but I'm not inclined to just slag the kid as if he's not a human being but some evil force.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 23:22, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know offhand, but part of the reason in this case, and one of the valid project issues, was the worry that the ARS would act as a (and I am quoting from memory) "general inclusionist noticeboard". That was not unfounded given Ikip's attempt to merge various projects (and worse, their 'membership') into here, and that same issue is evident with Dream Focus' post above. pablo 23:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC) just for the record Heh … seems I was quoting myself^diff and the quotation I was looking for was "general-purpose deletion noticeboard" pablo 00:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. If all people used the ARS for was to increase sourcing, there would be no issue. By picking AfDs carefully, getting good sources, engaging collegialy with those who disagree, and not contesting existing consensus on inclusion standards, I rescue articles consistently. Occasionally, people still try to tar me (despite my vocal rejection of "ARS membership") with that brush, but then I trot out an article or two that I've rescued and substantially improved and the objections seem to dry up. Jclemens (talk) 23:33, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I would also suggest that the best way to improve the reputation of ARS in the general community is to rise above the petty arguments and just do the work. The vast majority of WP editors are neither deletionists nor inclusionists. Being at either end of that spectrum is fine, and I think, having the extremes helps, so long as we remain civil. But if you are an extreme inclusionist, attacking deletionists, your arguments will be dismissed by the vast majority of editors. I would point to Uncle G as an good example we should follow. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with pablo's comment that there isn't a problem with the way ARS is set up, but there is a problem with some (or perhaps many) of the editors who are members. The aforementioned proposal that I threw together was a collection of thoughts I'd had (some of which were inspired by ideas that Jclemens had expressed previously) for ways to reform the ARS such that the editors who give it a bad name would no longer be able to do so. This is likely why Dream would immediately view it as "limiting", because it closes all the loopholes that are frequently abused to push along the radical inclusionist battle plan (like legal canvassing, votestacking, etc). I don't have any delusions that my proposal will be taken seriously by very many ARS members, but I think it is a useful starting point for a discussion on how to fix the obvious problems with this organization, as perceived by the Wikipedia community in general. And you can't deny that there is a strong perception that this organization suffers from some major problems. SnottyWong ^spout 23:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Vote stacking and canvassing? Indeed. If the article isn't improved, then the number of people turning out isn't relevant. And many people such as yourself actively participate in articles tagged, and almost always say delete. So tagging something for rescue isn't just attracting people who vote one way or another. Your mention of a "radical inclusionist battle plan" is absolutely absurd. Dream Focus 02:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I leave my name here as a member because I still feel that the work of rescuing articles is valid. I don't usually bother to tag articles anymore, and instead just go ahead and work on the articles I find at AfD that I believe I can rescue. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I also check the ARS category regularly, but often find things there I am not willing to spend my time on. I read the comments of those who say the ARS is just a vote-stacking mechanism, but just like in every previous MfD, there has never been any proof of this. I don't comment on a tagged AfD unless I have added something to the article, the work has already been done by someone else, or there is a glaring violation of WP:BEFORE. If another MfD is started, or an actual proposal is made at VP, I will certainly comment, but there are probaly a lot of other editors like me who don't get into the drama of it all, and just like to rescue articles. I won't waste any of my time on a proposal until it leaves user space and is actually put before the community. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 00:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair play Jim (and JClemens, and Uncle G, and many others). There are "article rescuers" and there are people who identify as "members" of ARS– and they are not necessarily the same thing. pablo 00:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you implying that since I consider myself a member of the ARS, i'm one of the bad guys? :P Silverseren^C 00:29, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Hellz noe. I suppose you could break down "There are "article rescuers" and there are people who identify as "members" of ARS– and they are not necessarily the same thing" as "article rescuing" does necessarily require membership of the ARS, and membership of the ARS does not necessarily mean that one is an "article rescuer". pablo 00:36, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I am a member of the ARS but not (so far) an article rescuer. In my case this is because I mostly focus my work on Wikipedia on a narrow range of topics involving electronics engineering, and I am looking for articles in that narrow area that I can rescue. Guy Macon 21:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for a Rescue-to-FA Bounty

I propose that the Article Rescue Squadron sponsor a competition for the Wikipedia:Bounty board. I am putting down $10 of my own money as a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation in the name of the first editor, or group of editors who takes an article tagged with {{Rescue}} in 2011, and not only rescues it from AfD, but with six months of it's AfD closure elevates it to Featured Article status. I also challenge my fellow ARS members to make a matching donation.

The only criteria I would add is that it:

• Has to have been Nominated for Deletion on or after January 1, 2011. No fair resting on our already accomplished laurels.
• Has to have been tagged for {{Rescue}} during the debate and have been significantly improved between the time of Rescue tag and the close of the debate. Anything we would add to our Hall of Fame would qualify for the Bounty.
• Of those articles which are Bounty-qualified, the first article to reach Featured Article status would win.

I'd like to get some input from the Project before I go ahead and post the Bounty. Is there anything I should add/tweak/change? Do you guys agree with this? Or would this just add fuel to the haters' fires? -- RoninBK _{T C} 07:25, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea in general. I'm not sure what others would think about it. -      Hydroxonium (talk) 03:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm ok with the idea in principle and would stump up some $$ to see it done (frankly, I think my $$ is safe!). Just a couple of caveats: ARS members would have to recuse themselves from any FAC discussion, and the deletion nom would have to be genuine. One sticking point could be FAC: that's a venue under a lot of stress with not enough reviewers, so they may object to their forum being used for reward (even though the $$ is going to WMF).--Mkativerata (talk) 03:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It happens all the time at WP:BOUNTY, and as far as I am aware there isn't a whole lot of objection to the practice as long as the money is going to the Foundation, and not to individual editors. (An RFC on directly paying editors at WP:RFC/PAID resulted in a no consensus, even with Jimbo himself opposed to the idea.) I don't believe that it would be necessary to recuse ourselves in the FAC process though as long as ARS members keep their discussions germane to FA criteria. In fact the FAC would seem to require that the article's supporters participate in the discussion to address any concerns raised.

Tell me about your ARS experience

I think ARS is the most important thing on Wikipedia. Fixing articles that would otherwise be deleted is extremely important. I have found it to be very hard work but also rewarding in and of itself. It's also great when others appreciate my efforts. — BUT — The dicussions in AfD and having others actively working against my efforts is awful and I find it extremely tiring. I've only rescued a handful of articles, but the ones I did, took — on average — 10 hours of effort each. And it can all be undone with 30 seconds of effort on somebody else's part. That's a 1200 to 1 ratio.

I ended up taking a wikibreak for well over a month after having rescued just a few articles. And watching what other ARS members go through is very depressing. I haven't been doing any rescuing or voting in AfD's since I've been back.

I have been keeping tabs on things though. And I have noticed the ARS superstars and they keep plugging away and they don't seem to suffer from what I was going through. Or maybe they just don't show it. Either way it's very inspirational.

There are over 350 members in ARS but I only seem to see a couple dozen (the superstars) that are really active. I'm wondering if the rest happened to have the same trouble I have. I thank my lucky stars that the ARS superstars are here and helping out. I'm wondering how they cope with all the negative stuff or if everybody's ARS experience is different than mine. -      Hydroxonium (talk) 04:12, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

A userbox on your user page reads, "This user is a true Wikipedian and allows everyone in the universe to completely rewrite every edit he has written on Wikipedia." Presumably, being open to having your edits completely rewritten would include being open to having your edits deleted as well. Why does being a "true Wikipedian" cause you so much stress that you have to go on wikibreak? You may not be heeding this essay faithfully enough. Which AfD was so painful that it prompted the wikibreak? SnottyWong ^gab 15:18, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

• Jeebus.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 15:59, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I understand completely where you're coming from. There are over 70 articles nominated per day, give or take. So many seem to be poorly referenced, badly written, suffering from CopyVios - but the subjects are notable. You mentioned the maths - it's easy to feel despair when you're continuously playing Sisyphus pushing articles uphill. I explained ARS to my friend like being an Emergency Room doctor. You save who you can, and you just have to let the rest go. I left for a while because I felt people were more eager to do the easy delete than the hard-work fix and it made me a bit sad. But at the end of the day, people will come and go. Articles will be created, edited and deleted. All things change. I have helped to preserve Smound, which was an AfD for patent nonsense that turned out to be not-so-nonsensical, Virginia Whitehill who was nominated as a non-notable BLP who was one of the main movers of the reproductive rights movement in Texas. I think in the end you have to savor your moments of victory, and give in gracefully when the consensus falls against you. It's 3am, so this may not make sense. ^_^ - ManicSpider (talk) 16:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, Afd's are almost always a gamble and gambling is inherently stressful. Especially when one's invested some time in finding and inserting sources. As far as stress, one needs a thick skin to participate in WP in general, that's not going to change anytime soon. I use a couple of stress-reduction strategies. One is to make only one keep post, but include as many links as possible at that time. Mentioning their publishers is good and only takes a few more moments. Then I rely on the superstars to notice and do followup argumentation if necessary - wimpy, but I tell myself, better that than burning out. I suppose their natural talents and life experiences have given them resiliency and debating skills and so it's sort of a division of labor. A dedicated researcher has a lot of value here, sometimes you have to dig thru umpteen pages of irrelevant or unreliable material. The superstars do freely pass out compliments to the researchers and that helps :) The other strategy is...scheduling rescue attempts...anticipating that you'll lose some, that any one may be stressful...balancing act. Novickas (talk) 16:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I have found that the rescue tag is being used far less often than it did when I started. I also see that there are less articles that are tagged that are in areas in which I am interested. I still check the cat regularly to look for viable articles, but usually find better possibilities at AfD that I can source without tagging and getting others involved. And we seem to be in the midst of yet another cycle of unsubstantiated accusations of vote-stacking being tossed around directly accusing all 350 people on that member list. I generally don't stress over unsuccessful rescues as much as I do about the accusations and clear bad faith on the part of those who wish to paint the entire ARS with a broad brush, and ignore the fact that they are directly accusing every member when they make such statements. I think this is part of why I don't tag articles more often. It has the possibility of bringing the entire AfD under attack (as opposed to scrutiny) by its simple placement. Bad nominations are made every day, and it's usually easy to identify at least one article to quietly source and rescue without bringing it to the attention of those editors who mistakenly conflate notability with importance. I guess I have been a little more focused on rescue as a purpose rather than a process, because I see the process as being a drama magnet. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 17:12, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Ditto. Silverseren^C 19:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm also in agreement that a "squadron" (or really an organization of any kind) is unnecessary for the purposes of rescuing articles. Rescuing is an individual effort. While individual members of the organization may be involved in genuine rescue work, the organization itself exists only as a way for like-minded individuals to organize themselves and push their POV about how WP should be. This is the genesis of the drama. This provokes other editors (who may not share your ideology) to feel like they need to push back to counteract the efforts of "the other side". Thus, a battle is formed. If both non-members and members alike are in agreement that an organization is unnecessary for rescuing articles, then what are we waiting for? SnottyWong ^chat 19:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That was a really nice job at twisting what JimMiller said. I mean, amazing job really, since you practically reversed the entire intention. That requires real English skills.

The issue is not with the ARS, but with the editors that are accusing all of us at every turn. You are one of the chief members of that clique, actually. Yes, the ARS needs to work better and we need to fix some things internally, we've all acknowledged that fact. But that doesn't change the truth that, no matter what we change, no matter how perfect we are, there will always be a group of people that it will not satisfy and there will always be accusations against us. It is for that reason that article rescuing in tiring, having to argue constantly with users like yourself. Silverseren^C 20:01, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you are fatigued from being forced to constantly argue with people like me. I wish there was something I could do to help, but I can't think of anything at the moment. I don't think that I twisted Jim Miller's words necessarily, I just expanded on his thoughts and took them to their logical conclusion. It's not even that I object to the ARS itself, since there are other useful wikiprojects out that are based on tasks which are purely individual efforts, and the projects help to make sure those tasks are getting done right (e.g. New page patrol and Copyeditors' guild). What I (and the vast majority of other editors who speak critically of the squadron) am mainly opposed to is the {{rescue}} template, and this is directly what Jim Miller was referring to above. Since we all agree that rescuing is an individual effort, what is the purpose of the {{rescue}} template other than to attract the attention of like-minded editors to an AfD? In practice, it tends to attract the attention of like-minded (read:inclusionist) editors as well as editors of other ideologies who feel the need to counteract the implicit canvassing brought about by the {{rescue}} template. Thus, an unnecessary WP:BATTLE is born at each and every rescue-tagged AfD. SnottyWong ^comment 20:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I firmly believe that when we as community have to delete an article, we as a community have failed. Deletion is merely a tactic and I wrote a metaphorical essay about that: Archimedes was deleted. Now I've also helped rescue a few articles and view ARS as a noble endeavor by devoted Wikipedian's to further all the strategic goals of WP and as a methodology to prevent and mitigate the need for and effects of deletion. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thats a good essay, lets hope it doesnt prove prescient. I fear the Squad no longer has much chance of exerting strategic influence. Even the mighty Ikip was unable to achieve much in that regard. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

• Snotty say: "I wish there was something I could do to help, but I can't think of anything at the moment". (hmmm... idle thoughts...). The tag has a valid use though, seriously. When I find I can source an article myself, I rarely use it, I just do the work. But sometimes those articles are ones I have found tagged by someone else who didn't have the time to source it themselves. Some of us are frankly better at spotting the articles worth saving, which is a valuable part of the squad's job.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 21:08, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly right. - ManicSpider (talk) 21:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Youre not suffering alone Hydrox . 2010 was certainly an Annus horribilis for the Squad. Okip recently posted here about the emotional turmoil many veterans have suffered. The Foundation have a study showing a fearful pattern that seems to be shared by the different Wikipedias in all the various languages. They all start with rapid growth and inclusionist values but eventually an inflexion point is reached where deletionism becomes ascendant and from that point the rate of growth rapidly declines and never recovers. Not all languages have reached that point yet, but all seem to be on the same path. Personally, even though I agree about the Squads importance, ive resolved to be much less active in AfDs this year, not that I was ever a superstar. Folk with strongly held contrasting views never bothers me, and I don’t mind that some of our efforts will go to waste. But I cannot abide a traitor so I find it quite distressing when editors wed expect to have our backs join in the attacks on prominent squad members. Ive also had a revelation Id like to share, which is that for all their successes deletionists have their share of emotional pain. I used to think everyone saw the Squads work as obviously heroic and on the side of the angels, but in the eyes of some deletionists squad members can be bullies! From the SHOUTING and emotive edit summaries deletionists make in response to rescue efforts, it appears that some of them feel we are a threat to Wikpedias academic integrity. It doesnt seem worth causing them upset if weve got no long term chance of upholding our people and content friendly values. Ultimately, one of two things are going to happen to Wikipedia. As deletionists increasingly get their way and encounter less opposition, they may begin to have a change of heart. God works this way sometimes, winning through apparent weakness. In this scenario effective Jim Miller types who perform low key undramatic rescues may play an important role, but there will be no more heroes after the fashion of Anobody or Ikip. Alternatively, deletionists will just keep raising their standards and slam the door on new content, until our article count begins to fall. At this point its just a matter of time before Wikiepedia is replaced as the worlds no 1 reference source, and follows Citizendium by descending into an elite and irrelevant academic backwater. The replacement will hopefully have inclusionist values hardcoded into its founding pillars, to protect it from following the historical trajectory of the other Wikipedias. I can imagine a permanent arbcom staffed by legends such as Ikip, Anobody, Benji, Dream , Milowent, yourself, MSQ, RAN and the Colonel. Either way, we don’t know for many years and things are likely going to get worse before they get better. In the end, good will triumph over evil. It is inevitable. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

• If not for ARS, I doubt I would be active at all on wikipedia. One editor started a vendetta against a group of related articles around August 2009, and I found the ARS, and learned that notable subject articles were indeed getting deleted. I realized that anyone really can edit wikipedia, and make a difference. I also love obscure knowledge and wikipedia has more of that (99% of it "notable", in fact) than anywhere since the dawn of time. Sometimes I get extremely angry in AfD and my comments show it, I go on hunger strikes and call deletion sprees death marches and book burnings but I find this therapeutic. Especially when I win. Then I dance on the virtual graves of my opponents. But SERIOUSLY, even most of those who are deletion-minded can be got along with and do make valuable contributions to the project. You can't take it too seriously, even though saving articles is awesome stuff. Even Abraham Lincoln, in the darkest days of the American Civil War, would read lengthy excerpts of contemporary humorists to his horrified cabinet--lest he lose all hope. Don't lose hope.... I typed this earlier today see some intervening comments above are coming in, and our dear friend Snotty is among them (shiver!), which I'll look at now.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 21:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I believe deletion is necessary at times. When I research something and can't find any evidence of notability, I put in a 'Delete' vote - while, as I said above, there's a lot of notable neglected articles, there's also a lot of spam and cruft and general crap. On the other hand, I don't understand why you're being so antagonistic, Snottywong. In its present form, how is ARS really any different to the Unreferenced BLP Rescue group? It's simply a group of like minded individuals who just look at all articles up for deletion, not just unreferenced BLPs. As long as people are fixing and referencing articles, how does that hurt you or Wikipedia? But then, I get the feeling that there's a lot of old politics mixed in here that I don't quite understand. And to be honest, FeydHuxtable emotive language like calling people 'traitors' because they don't 'have our back' doesn't help - surely if Wikipedia isn't what we want it to be and is replaced, people will just move there when that happens? Honestly, there doesn't need to be a Battleground - let's just save the good articles when we see them. - ManicSpider (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:07, 14 January 2011 (UTC).

Youre right, 'traitors' probably isnt a helpful word, they arent I guess, just seems like that sometimes. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

• When I'm on arbcom, we'll let you off easy for that. :-) --Milowent • ^talkblp-r 21:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

*lol* Yay for being second against the wall when the revolution comes! - ManicSpider (talk) 21:24, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I love H2G2 references. Don't forget your towel. Thanks for the input everybody. It has been very helpful to find out about other people's ARS experiences. Best regards. -      Hydroxonium (talk) 22:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Here is my experience, such as it is, as a total newbie with the ARS. I am in complete agreement with the aims of the ARS, but am still a bit hesitant concerning whether I have the knowledge and experience to do a good job of rescuing an article if I do it alone. Because of this I have been watching the efforts of others here and hope to jump in by adding a reference here or rewriting a paragraph there until I gain more confidence. I would imagine that there are others here who have the same hesitation. Guy Macon 03:15, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not terribly active on Wikipedia at the moment; I mostly just watch my watchlist to make sure no vandalism happens there. This is a time thing more than anything. When I do want to give a bit of time to Wikipedia I find an AfD article that I think is not just notable, but is something that I can fix so that no reasonable person can argue otherwise, and I put in the work to make it a fully cited article. This is a lot of work which is why I do it so rarely; and sometimes my first assessment is wrong so it's a harder sell than I'd expected. But so far nothing I've put that much work into has been deleted; I may well be lucky, but it's let me keep my enthusiasm (tempered by my lack of time...) about the whole thing. --Zeborah (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

• There are > 350 people on the ARS member list, an impressive number to be sure. But this means ... not much, other than at one time these people endorsed the stated aims of the project (improving articles which are nominated for deletion to address the concerns raised by the nominator, in case anyone had forgotten). Looking down that list I find inactive editors, editors with very low contribution counts, blocked vandals, banned sockpuppeteers etc (for example one has 16 edits, 6 of which are to article space; another has not edited since 2008; yet another is banned after years of creating (and "rescuing") self-promotional articles and using an army of sockpuppets to do so). There are many familiar names of active editors, but no more than a handful of editors who actually perform "article rescue". Conversely there are many missing names – editors who do routinely improve articles but choose (for whatever reason) not to add their names to the list.
  Feyd's wailing about rampant deletionism leading to a falling article count is, of course, bollocks. There are many articles still left to create. Obviously article creation goes through a quasi-exponential phase when you start an encyclopaedia with an article count of 0. But maintaining the content that we do have takes work and editor time too – look at the articles that are in one or more maintenance categories to get an idea of the level of work that is involved there. Anyone who can't find a {{rescue}}-tagged and rescuable article might want to improve one which isn't nominated for deletion yet, but may be nominated in the future. Deletion of some articles is inevitable, and AfD fills an important role. Without it there would be more articles like Neteraantmwmw, created back in the "sources, schmources" bad old days (or the good old days when anyone could create an article about anything they wanted, depending on your point of view).
   pablo 11:41, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I started patrolling AfD for articles to fix long before the ARS was even a gleam in User:Tlogmer's eye. I point to efforts such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Women Fully Clothed and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prostitution in the Czech Republic, where in both cases the Notability had not yet been established in the article, but turned out to be clearly notable subjects. I joined ARS when it formed with the idea that we would be doing more of this.

I believe that Wikipedia is supposed to be the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, even if you're just a fan of whatever it is you're writing on. You should not have to be a initiated into the cabal to be able to have an article in Wikipedia. Time and time again, I have seen articles that have been nominated straight off of New Page Patrol, even seen articles CSD'ed out from under the creator's nose while they were still trying to figure out the site. This was back before we had the simple litmus test of the General Notability Guideline; back then the concept of "Notability" was used as a kludge to bash articles that the Deletionists didn't like, or for that matter didn't understand. Even though we have a more refined process nowadays, it's still not as user friendly as it needs to be to truly be an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. And this is why Wikipedia needs groups like the ARS, so that newbie editors who suddenly and unexpectedly have their work up for nomination can turn to a group of Wikipedia experts that can help turn their embryonic article into a fully developed piece.

Now having said all of that, I am fully aware that there has been abuse in the past, just like how the Notability guideline has been abused in its early history. I do not condone !vote stacking or cavnassing, that is not (nor has ever been) what the Rescue tag was designed for. Confirmed WP:SOCKs and blocked users should be removed from our roster. I would not remove inactive members, (I myself tend to be a WikiOgre, only coming out of my cave in fits and starts.) We should do more and more to distance ourselves from behavior which is not in the true spirit of our mission. And we need to do more to portray ourselves as a positive force within the encyclopedia. Part of the reason for the decline in the project is that good editors who would save good articles are turned away by our bad public image. -- RoninBK _{T C} 15:51, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that "You should not have to be a initiated into the cabal to be able to have an article in Wikipedia" (assuming that by 'have an article' you mean 'write an article' rather than 'have an article written about you'). By the same token, you don't need to join the ARS to improve ('rescue' if you prefer) articles which are in danger of deletion.
Mike Cline's statement that 'if we ... have to delete an article, then we ... have failed' overstates things; if nothing were ever deleted, Wikipedia would resemble the internet as a whole; a repository for random thoughts, pr0nz, hoaxes, lies, opinions, with a few facts tucked away here and there.

See also

• User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing
• When Nothing Is Better Than Something

 pablo 21:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You assume correctly about "have an article," I'm not talking about someone trying to put an article up about themselves. And I don't disagree with you about having to join this WikiProject, or any WikiProject for that matter. I would differ with you on your "if nothing were deleted" point though, I think you are overstating things just as much. I believe that if half the amount of effort that people put into deletion were put into improving those articles to encyclopedic standards, I believe that Wikipedia would truly be the sum of human knowledge... with a few lies, opinions and hoaxes here and there. (Oh and by the way, hoaxes can be fine too...) -- RoninBK _{T C} 22:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree about the hoaxes. Not that all articles can be improved to encyclopaedic standards however.! pablo 22:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh Pablo, I have overstated the failure of deletion only from the deletionist perspective. Imagine an encyclopedia where all the new articles met our demanding guidelines and all new editors knew what was encyclopedic and what wasn't. There would be nothing needing deletion. Landfills are still necessary, but someday maybe they won't be! --Mike Cline (talk) 22:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

But because all articles do not meet our (not really so demanding) guidelines, we do need to remove, repurpose or recycle some of them. pablo 22:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Pablo, would you or would you not agree that if there was a mechanism that ensured every new article met our WP:GNG and associated SNGs unequivocally, that the need for our elaborate deletion mechanisms might be religated to the unusual and occasional? --Mike Cline (talk) 23:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Well yes, that seems self-evident. But it wouldn't be Wikipedia. I think that there's a more interesting variety of articles here because it's possible for editors to submit imperfect (and sometimes downright bad) articles that are then improved (where possible) by others. pablo 23:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly, Pablo. And that's why we're here, to help improve the imperfect articles when others would try to eliminate that variety by deletion. Of course we can't save everything; obvious vandalism and patent nonsense should of course be deleted. We're not trying to save those articles. -- RoninBK _{T C} 02:18, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Sure, vandalism and patent nonsense should be deleted … and copyright violations, obviously. And hoaxes, that goes without saying. And unverifiable information of course. And claims about people that could lead to libel actions. And articles about my pet cat Katinka Ingabogovinanana.Before you know it we're going to need some kind of criteria for inclusion ... pablo 11:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You're missing my point. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have standards. I'm just saying that deletion should not be the default answer. I'm going to quote from one of the essays that you posted, (Uncle G's,) who says, "Turning bad articles into good (or at least fair) articles often discourages or even stops this cargo cult article writing." -- RoninBK _{T C} 18:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I was misunderstanding for comic effect ... I think that deletion must always be an option, not every article can be turned from 'bad' to fair (there are only five currently tagged for {{rescue}} for instance). I don't think that it is the default response to a poor article though; many more are tagged for improvement by editors who recognise a problem with the article but lack the skill, time or motivation (or whatever) to do the work themselves. There is (I think it's still ongoing) a move afoot to rename AfD "Articles for discussion" and in practice the outcome of an AfD discussion is often to merge the content, rename and rewrite the article etc (as well as the increasingly popular "no consensus" which defaults to "do nothing"). It's not the intent of an AfD but it is often the case that the deletion nomination focuses the attention of new editors on an article resulting in improvement. pablo 22:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. One thing I've been thinking about is whether we'd be better served with a prod variant for rescue. The way I'm think of this is we'd prod an article for rescue, and then ARS could work that list. The idea would be to rescue prod an article that you think can be saved, but appears subject to deletion, such as an unrefed BLP. And if you're looking at a regular prod, but you think the article is worth saving, you could replace the regular prod with the rescue prod to get some eyes on it. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I would be totally down with that idea. Silverseren^C 00:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Josef Schultz

German soldier that dropped his gun to stand besides Yugoslav partisans about to be shot. I have edited it and added references and pictures. If anyone can help, please do. ^walk victor falk ^talk 05:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I tagged it for Rescue. This article represents what the Article Rescue Squadron is here for. [4] Dream Focus 06:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed you did, and the response from the ARS was ... underwhelming. Kudos to Skäpperöd who is actually doing the work and Anotherclown (and others) who have assisted by identifying the problems with the article. pablo 13:00, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion: 00:07, 12 January 2011

Tagged for rescue: 15:10, 21 January 2011

Complaint that ARS response was "underwhelming": 13:00, 22 January 2011

Result (keep): 16:45, 21 January 2011

It seems unreasonable to complain about ARS response less than 20 hours after the article was tagged for rescue. It's called the Article Rescue Squadron, not the Article Rescue Rapid Response S.W.A.T. Team. Guy Macon 14:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't a complaint. pablo 15:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I found the above comment to be ... underwhelming. Guy Macon 16:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

No doubt. pablo 17:53, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. It did come across a bit snarky, although I assume that was not the intent. I think nerves are somewhat frayed given the fairly long periods of discussion about the mission and value of ARS, we should all probably exercise a bit of care in our choice of words. --Nuujinn (talk) 15:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

• I tagged it for rescue at 06:32 [5], 21 January 2011 and it closed at 6:45, 21 January 2011 just 13 minutes later. People didn't really have time to notice and respond. And Pablo does seem to complain about the Rescue Squadron a lot, and constantly. Why come to this page just to complain? Dream Focus 18:34, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

• It wasn't a complaint. pablo 18:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

• Seemed more like an insult to me. "and the response from the ARS was ... underwhelming." Dream Focus 06:27, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

If multiple readers all read your words as a complaint or insult, you might want to consider what the common factor is (hint: it's you.) On the other hand, before writing "Pablo does seem to complain about the Rescue Squadron a lot", it might by wise to check Pablo's history and see whether that claim is true (I looked and I don't see it). Or, as we like to say here on Wikipedia, [Citation Needed]. That being said, I owe everyone here an apology for violating one of my own rules (and the best advice I ever got on Wikipedia) by talking about other editors instead of talking about how to improve Wikipedia articles. Sorry about that, and please feel free to slap me with a trout if you notice me doing that. Guy Macon 12:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Good advice (first sentence). As for the rest of it, bear in mind that Dream Focus seems to complain about Wikipedia in general a lot; one must always consider the source. pablo 13:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

It strikes me that at this point none of the conversation is about ARS, perhaps we should drop it.... --Nuujinn (talk) 13:55, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

My First Rescue!

It's a small thing, but the template User trout has been rescued from deletion. Woot!
It looks like this:

In an emergency, this user may be slapped with a trout.

Guy Macon 13:27, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Really? Really? I'd encourage you to look deeper into what article rescue is really about. I came here hoping to give an attaboy for a job well done. Instead, I find myself tempted to leave an incivil message about missing the point. At the end of the day, how will a user page template help our readers who come to Wikipedia seeking knowledge? Jclemens (talk) 00:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I purposely chose what looked like the least important candidate for deletion (other than obviously bad stuff that deserves to be deleted) to get my feet wet with, figuring that I would probably fail. That way any mistakes caused by my inexperience would cause minimum harm. You might wish to consider this advice from [ WP:BITE ]: nothing scares potentially valuable contributors away faster than hostility. I think it would be fair to say that this applies to new article rescuers as well as to new Wikipedia editors Guy Macon 01:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

When I look at Special:Contributions/Guymacon, I don't see that you've done any rescuing whatsoever. You tagged something, voted in the same discussion, and it was kept. The process of article rescue involves...

1. Reviewing an article deletion nomination for specific, policy based deletion rationale
2. Evaluating it, often as should have been done per WP:BEFORE, and finding out whether or not the problem is fixable.
3. If fixable, fixing it or getting someone else to do it.

At no point is "voting" or "tagging with {{rescue}}" an essential--or even productive, in many cases--part of the rescue process. By all means, feel free to go out and try again to garner a first rescue. Jclemens (talk) 01:25, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't much of a rescue, the nominator withdrew the nomination. And in all honesty, the Template namespace version SHOULD have been deleted per Wikipedia:Userbox migration since it had already been moved to userspace at User:SheffieldSteel/Trout. Besides, the Rescue tag is supposed to be used for Article namespace. Highly inappropriate Rescue. -- RoninBK _{T C} 11:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I take that back about non-Article namespace since there is precedent for using it elsewhere, though it is not within our primary focus, (not enough of us are really that proficient in Template syntax) -- RoninBK _{T C} 11:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• well, its a very long convoluted story, Jc, but, I would hazard to guess that this rescue will help keep the trout meme alive on wikipedia, and one day it will be used to admonish a user who wrongly nominated an article for deletion, and that article will be saved, and 50 years hence, a young physicist will have an epiphany while reading the article via the "random article" link and eating some funyuns. The article will be 50 Cutest Child Stars: All Grown Up (currently not in existence, but it surely will be recreated one day) and will have no relation to physics, but for some reason (perhaps the boundless energy of Emmanuel Lewis) it cause this physicist to invent a real Perpetual motion machine. That being said, template rescue is really not ARS's mission, but you gotta start somewhere.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 01:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

Sorry, but someone had to do it. SnottyWong ^confess 05:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that user space templates are inherently outside of scope. But when your total edits on the template is adding the resuce template, then congratulation yourself for a sucessful rescue is missing the point. We are about fixing the concerns that lead to articles beeing nominated. We are not about casting votes in discussions. Taemyr (talk) 06:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

---

Taking the above criticism to heart (that's The Code Of The Trout Slap Seeker) I have been working on rescuing SmallBASIC. Could someone be so kind as to review my puny efforts and TroutSlap me as necessary? Thanks! Guy Macon 16:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a good start. You'l probably need to find some more sources though, as the reviews are rather thin and is perhaps better as sources for an overview articles of programing languages for Palm. The Ascii world link only needs to the front page, from which it's nonobvious how to find the article. Taemyr (talk) 17:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The Ascii world link has been fixed; still working on improving the sources. Guy Macon 22:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Pokéthulhu

Does anyone have any sources to add to the Pokéthulhu article? 129.33.19.254 (talk) 23:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I note the AfD discussion - what is the context of the word? It's not one I'm familliar with. - ManicSpider (talk) 03:19, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

It's deleted now, but it was a game based on the concept of Pokemon mixed with Cthulhu. 129.33.19.254 (talk) 15:27, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Deletion discussion is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pokéthulhu (2nd nomination) Guy Macon 15:50, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

"Pokéthulhu" -- that's an awesome name.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 16:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Shame. That's actually looking like it might have been rescuable. At the very least, it'd make a humorous entry in a "list of parody games" or some such. Jclemens (talk) 00:14, 28 January 2011 (UTC)